“Global engagement” was born out of a university-wide process of reflection on old and new ways to engage with the Global South in a world where ‘life itself is at stake’, in the words of Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe.
Indeed, from the perspectives of sustainability and social justice, also present in the Sustainable Development Goals, all countries have become “developing country”, facing their own specific development challenges. What’s more, the biggest challenges of all play out at the global level, they require a more coordinated effort to take due care of our common home, the world.
Global Engagement focuses on the implications of this for academic work on, in and with partners of the so-called Global South. We believe that the global challenges of our current era crucially hinge on combining a diversity of academic and non-academic knowledges in building inclusive and sustainable pathways of change.
How to develop this cooperation on the bridge between north and south? We emphasize the reciprocity in relationships and partnerships, in a field thoroughly marked by diversity in ways of knowing and valuing life but also by the interconnectedness of life worlds and by inevitable power asymmetries and unequal capabilities people have to enact social change. This also requires fostering a critical global citizenship among UAntwerp staff and students to cultivate sensitivity to these issues.
What do we do?
In order to realize these ideas at the University of Antwerp, we work in three ways.
First of all, through the Global Minds project, we can give support to all types of initiatives by students and staff of the university that match the agenda of Global Engagement.
We also set up a number of trainings for staff already active or thinking about setting up activities in cooperation with partners in the Global South (see below).
Second, we mainstream the agenda of Global Engagement by working in cooperation with other departments or entities at the University of Antwerp, inter alia (list is incomplete):
To support the activities set up by the University Foundation of Development Cooperation (USOS) regarding awareness and trainings of students within or complementary to their standard curricula.
To set up a number of training initiatives for staff in cooperation with departments on experiences with decolonization of curricula, or dilemmas of partnership in academic cooperation with institutes in the Global South.
To cooperate with the Ethical Review Commission regarding how research projects carried out in the Global South can foresee benefits-sharing measures
To work together with the Public Relations Department regarding the integration of Global South alumni in its alumni policy.
Third, we also set up a number of activities ourselves, in the first place to pursue the process of critical self-reflection on our own project. Global Engagement not only has the ambition to contribute to further decolonization of our relationships with actors in the Global South, we also conceive of this project as a form of repairing historical injustices. Given the importance and urgency of this, we need to build in continued debate and permanent self-questioning, sharpening awareness about the blind spots in how we think and act.